OSAA wrestling championships: 4A Crook County cruises to first team title in 38 years

North Marion's Lucas Randall pinned Crook County's Michael Seyl in 32 seconds on the first day of the OSAA wrestling state championships at Veterans Memorial Colliseum. Randall went on to capture his fourth consecutive state title. (Doug Beghtel/The Oregonian)

Crook County obliterated the competition, rolling to its first team wrestling title since 1975. Going into Saturday night’s finals, the only question was whether or not the Cowboys would reach Hermiston’s scoring record of 303, which was set in 2009.

They came up a bit short, but the Cowboys racked up 290 points to claim victory. Henley was far behind in second with 196 and Sweet Home finished third.

Like all sports at the school, coach Jake Huffman’s program is completely self-funded.

“It feels so good to be able to bring a team title to Prineville because it’s such a wrestling-friendly community,” said Huffman, who was named 4A’s coach of the year in a ceremony prior to the finals.

Huffman says putting together his team every year involves a “lot of begging and borrowing.”

The school district pays for the team’s bus trips, but everything else must be paid for by the team, including equipment, mats, lodging and even the coaching salaries.

“We make sure the kids have what they need, and if there’s any money left over we’ll pay ourselves,” said Huffman. “Sometimes there’s not anything left over.”

Crook County brought a tournament-high 21 wrestlers to the Coliseum, but the Cowboys only finished in fourth place with 22 qualifiers last year.

“Last year they got the starry eyes and didn’t know how to be successful here,” said Huffman. “This year, they were ready and knew they could compete with anyone in the state.”

North Marion’s Lucas Randall picked up his fourth consecutive state title, winning the 145-pound championship by fall in the first round. He joins 25 other wrestlers to pull off the feat, including Culver’s Jared Kasch, who won at 120 pounds in 2A/1A earlier in the evening.

“The match was almost too easy, like it was a dream,” said Randall, who plans to wrestle at Southern Oregon next year. “I’ve given up a lot to just do nothing but wrestle the last few months, so it means everything to me.”

Senior Colton Schilling of Sweet Home won his third title, downing No. 1 seed Zech Bresser of Henley. Bresser’s brother, Ronnie, won his third title in the 120-pound weight class.

Cody Crawford of Cascade also captured his third title, winning by fall in one minute. That was the longest match of the tournament for the Oregon State-bound Crawford, who won his first three matches in 12, 43 and 37 seconds, respectively.